Bankers are born no greedier than the rest of us. That assertion alone makes Joseph Stiglitz's comprehensive postmortem stand out from the reams of books published so far about the financial crisis. Instead of attacking individuals, the Nobel Prize--winning economist faults the system that delivered us to the brink, citing the effects of everything from deregulation to the misaligned incentives of people selling financial products. But Stiglitz has his sights on a larger problem as well. For too long, he...